Ann Demeulemeester recently sat down with Dazed Digital over tea to discuss everything from her latest jewelery line to her decision to include older men in her spring 2009 runway show.
Dazed Digital: Your S/S 09 Men’s show was also very poignant with the use of older gentlemen in the show. Was that also from Hesse?
Ann Demeulemeester: Yes, he also wrote poems and text about the beauty of getting older. I saw pictures of Herman Hesse and I really liked the man. He was so beautiful in his fragility, so old and so fragile and so rich in spirit that I had to do something with it! I thought it would be beautiful to do a show where you have the fragility of the very young and the fragility of the very old and put them together. The older you get, the wiser the clothes would be. The young would be black and the older would be beautiful, shining and white, like an angel. It was an experiment, I wanted to break the rule of the young and the beautiful. I wanted to show the old and the beautiful.
The oldest model was 87! I thought he was the most beautiful. It was amazing to me how proud they were, they had so much dignity. To be able to give them that made me so happy that day. They were so much more proud than the young guys. It was amazing to see their grace. It was a real experience.
Read more of the interview at Dazed Digital
